


Room 700

by Belle86



Series: Room 700 [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Fantasizing, Masturbation, Prostitution, Substitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 05:26:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1970652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belle86/pseuds/Belle86
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I want someone tall.</p><p>With broad shoulders.</p><p>And red hair."</p><p> </p><p>Mako and Raleigh find themselves in a club that offers a menu that doesn't include vodka or gin.</p><p>And if Mako can't have what she really wants, at least she can find something...someone...to pretend with for a little while.</p><p>What could possibly go wrong with that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Saving the world had its perks. 

One, apparently, was having the pick of Hannibal Chau's "companions", whenever, wherever, completely free of charge. Even a black market kingpin had his moments of sentimentality and gratitude. 

So if Raleigh and Mako ended up in a club one night in Kowloon, one which offered a menu separate from the one of gin and vodka concoctions, there surely wouldn't be a soul on the premises willing to spoil their heroes' evenings. 

Which was how Mako Mori found herself sitting in a plush leather booth, across from Mr. Chau himself, watching her copilot be willingly coaxed to the lavish back rooms by a man and a woman, both dark haired and olive complexioned- who danced like angels and, by the look on Raleigh's face, talked like devils, moving in tandem like two sides of the same smooth, beautiful coin.

“So, what do you want, China doll?”

Not even touching on the fact that she was neither Chinese nor a doll, Chau's question rang in her ears. What _did_ she want?

Well, she knew exactly what she wanted, but she'd be damned if she was going to admit it to some drug-peddling, velvet-wearing hustler who could never possibly understand where her desires bloomed from and how deep they ran.

The rational part of her brain told her to get up and walk back over to the bar. To order another drink, find a dance partner on her own; or to just leave and go back to the Shatterdome, to the quiet corridors and the familiarity of her bunk.

But the sake he'd provided made a different decision. 

"I want someone tall," she said, without realizing the words had left her mouth. 

"Well that's certainly specific."

"And with broad shoulders," she continued, like something outside of herself had taken control, and she was disinclined to stop it. 

Chau raised an eyebrow, urging her to continue, but in that moment, there was a beat, a pause; a chance for her to back out and pretend this wasn't happening, that she wasn't ordering a person off of an invisible menu to let her pretend for a night that she could have something she shouldn't. 

She let that chance die a quick death, "and red hair."

And there it was. 

Mako drew up straighter in her seat, waiting for Hannibal to laugh, to wave his hand and tell her to go home and go to bed like a good little girl. 

When he nodded his head, she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

"I have just the guy, doll face," he cocked an index finger towards her like he was firing an invisible gun, and pulled a plastic key card from his breast pocket.

"Room 700 is one of our best suites," he began, sliding the card to where her hands sat folded in the tabletop, "we'll get you well taken care of there; only the best for the great Ms. Mako Mori," he finished with a wink.

Mako stared at the small plastic rectangle in front of her, glossy black and nondescript, trying to get a handle of the maelstrom swirling inside of her; unable to speak, unable to meet Chau's eyes.

"I'm not a big believer in shame," his words jarred her from the sound of her heartbeat pounding in her ears, "if you want something," he pitched his voice lower as she glanced up at him, "or someone, there's nothing worse than hoping it'll just go away," he rose from the booth and turned back to her, "because it won't. Best to do whatever you can about it."

Mako was grateful for Chau turning on his heel and walking back towards the dance floor, that he couldn't see the blush coloring her cheeks, couldn't watch her rise from the booth and make her way to the back elevator, flashing the key card she still clutched like a lifeline to the tattooed bouncer at the bottom.

The bouncer nodded at her, stepped back and pressed a button almost invisible in the dark wood of the wall, and moved aside so she could step in. He leaned into the elevator, gestured to the slot on one side of the door, then leaned out again, allowing the doors to close behind him.

Alone in the elevator, Mako hesitated before bringing the keycard to the slot.

Was she actually doing this? Could she? If Raleigh was, what difference did it make if she did the same thing?

The difference was that she was the one who specifically requested someone who looked like the man she’d daydreamed of marrying when she was a girl; who’s name she’d come with on her lips countless times, alone in her bunk in her quarters, in her shower stall with her back pushed hard against the cool tile the way she imagined he’d press her against it.

She closed her eyes and held her breath, steadying herself.

And saw his face behind her eyes; saw one of the small smiles he’d give her, her and only her, which softened his world-weary face for just a moment. She remembered the kiss he’d given her on her sixteenth birthday, when she and Sensei had been in Sydney; how he’d been close enough that she was surrounded by the clean, masculine scent of him, how the scratch of his stubble on her cheek had shot clean through her, how she’d been scared he would somehow be able to sense the sudden slick, throbbing heat between her thighs...

_...best to do whatever you can about it..._

Mako opened her eyes, slid the keycard into the slot and watched the tiny lights go from red to yellow to green, finally releasing the breath she’d been holding as the elevator began to move.


	2. Chapter 2

Room 700 was nice. _Really_ nice. 

All dark wood and creamy soft linens, the muted gold accents rounded out the room’s opulent appearance while still being subtle enough to maintain the warmth that the low lighting provided. 

Mako took a moment to look around before settling onto the bedspread, feet hanging down and crossed at the ankles. She didn’t have to wait long before the door opened, whoever Chau had selected slipped in and shut the it behind him.

He hadn’t been lying when he’s said he had _just the guy_. 

Mako let her eyes rake over the man standing at the door; tall, broad-shouldered, and red-haired, just as requested; simply dressed in dark jeans and a deep ocean blue v-necked tshirt that was just this side of too snug.

But it was the man’s face made Mako wonder briefly if Chau consciously employed lookalikes of jaeger pilots - she was sure there would be good money in that - seemingly cut from marble, with a strong jaw and straight nose, leading up to crystal blue eyes shaded under impossibly long, fair lashes.

And scruff across the bottom of his face. Perfect.

“Miss Mori, I’m presuming?” Even the voice was on point, lacking an Australian drawl, possibly American, but warm and whiskey-rough.

She held his eyes as he crossed to her, stopping close enough to the bed that Mako had to tilt her head back to keep looking at him, but not so close as to box her in. He hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans, oh-so-subtly drawing her attention to the bulge of his biceps, “I can call you something different if you’d like.”

_...don’t drool over Miss Mori..._

“Miss Mori works fine,” she braced her palms behind her and leaned back on them, thought for a second, “but _pretty girl_ will be good, also.”

He nodded in acknowledgement and closed the gap between them, using his finger tips to push her knees apart and stand between them; Mako let them fall open easily, not moving her hands or torso an inch, focusing on keeping her breathing even, on trying not to show outwardly how hard her heart had begun to pound against her ribs.

“You haven’t told me your name,” she said.

He leaned forward then, slow and graceful, almost predatory like a jungle cat. He braced his large hands on the bed at her sides, caging her in with his arms, “it’s whatever you want it to be.”

Mako couldn’t help but laugh, “I’m not a little girl, I can handle your actual name.”

He cocked his head and looked at her, flicking his eyes up and down her face, then smiled broadly, “no, you’re not, are you? Well, since you must know, it’s Jack. Still okay with you, Miss Mori?” He dragged out the syllables in her last name just the littlest bit, just enough to make her shudder slightly.

“Yes, _Jack_ , still okay with me,” she said.

He grinned then, and dropped his head down to nuzzle her neck, grazing his lips over her pulse, bringing his body flush with hers, and nipping her earlobe before asking her, “so, you’ve got me for the whole night, anything in particular you want?”

It dawned on her that she hadn't even thought of that.

Through the thickening haze of nerves and arousal, Mako sorted through her mind; the endless number of fantasies she’d entertained about the man who was now her commanding officer. 

How would she even articulate them?

_Bend me over the dresser so I can pretend it’s his desk_

_Then spank me because ‘I messed up the bloody paperwork’_

_Let me pin your arms above your head and ride you like I won a sparring match_

_Fuck me on the cold bathroom floor so I can imagine it’s the metal catwalk overlooking where our jaegers used to be_

_Rub your stubble all over my body and then fuck me until I don’t know my own name_

_Pull me close against your chest and tell me you want me as much as I want you_

Well, a couple of those were doable.

She lifted one hand off the bedspread and hooked her index finger into the collar of his tshirt, “I’ll think about it,” she brought the tip of her finger from his collar to press against his lower lip, “but why don’t you impress me first?”

“Now that, I can do,” he grinned at her, “just relax, Miss Mori.”

When his lips slanted over hers, part of her focus was on the smooth, hot feel of them, the rest was on that kiss on her birthday in Sydney.

When his fingers unbuttoned her blouse and his hips ground against hers, her focus was on fingers drumming on a desk in the Hong Kong Shatterdome and hips leveraging opponents up and over, onto the training mat.

When his palm gently ground against the swollen nub of her clit and his fingers now curled into her, into that firm, rough patch in the front of her that made her abdominal muscles twitch and her hips flick upwards, her focus was on strong, broad hands flexing around a chipped coffee mug, during a teleconference with the UN that she couldn’t remember any detail about but that one.

And when she had her legs hooked around his lower back as he drove into her, his fingers dancing over her clit and his thick cock pushing her closer and closer to the edge of orgasm, she could let her eyes flutter almost shut, and let herself imagine that this was how _he_ would fuck her; would drive her into the mattress, push the air out of her lungs, and make stars burst behind her eyelids.

She could scratch her nails through his close-cropped ginger hair, and could imagine that that was how _he_ would grunt at the sensation.

She could run her palms up and down the broad expanse of his back, coming to grip his strong shoulders, and imagine that that was how _his_ muscles would bunch and flex under her hands.

As her hips flicked upward, losing their rhythm, as her breath became more and more shallow, and as the heat coiling in her belly began to feel like it would never release, she moaned as he brought his mouth to her shoulder, her neck, then her ear, rumbling encouragements that her brain could barely decipher. 

The scratch of his stubble up the column of her neck called forth another slew of images from her imagination, but when he rasped into her ear, “come for me, pretty girl,” there was no imagining how hard her orgasm tore through her, or the name that fell from her lips as she came completely undone.

….

She washed up in the adjoining bathroom, noting the expensive bath products on the shelves and in the mirrored cabinet, and part of her wondered just how much a night like this would cost for someone else. The beautiful room, the gorgeous and _skilled_ escort, the other amenities scattered about.

And another part of her wondered if she could afford it.

She didn’t have to ruminate more on her second thought for very long, though. As Jack walked her back to the elevator, he said, “just so you know, Miss Mori, Hannibal filled me in on the details of the deal he made you tonight, and wanted me to relay to you that this is a standing offer. So you hold on to that key, there,” he gestured to the shining black plastic card in her hand, “and feel free to use it whenever you like.”

The elevator chimed, announcing it’s arrival, and Mako stepped in as the doors opened.

“Thank you, Jack,” she said, “I will certainly consider it.”

He smiled at her and inclined his head as the doors slid closed.

She returned to the lobby and found Raleigh waiting there, cheeks still pink and lazily sipping from a bottle of what looked like juice, another bottle of it in his other hand. He smiled at her and offered her the other bottle, “have fun?”

She smiled and accepted the juice, “why yes, I did. And I assume you did, as well?” She took a long pull from the bottle, just now realizing how thirsty she was.

Raleigh just chuckled, “yeah, you could say that.”

They walked outside and one of Chau’s steampunk-hipster looking guards gently held up a hand, speaking into a device at his wrist. A moment later a black town car pulled up, and the guard opened the door for them, “it’s all taken care of,” he said, “Mr. Chau sends his thanks.”

Raleigh tipped the guy anyway and climbed in, sliding across the bench seat to make room for Mako.

As the car pulled away in the direction of the Shatterdome, Mako gazed out the window at the city and felt a pleasant soreness begin to settle between her thighs.

She lost herself in the flickering of the brightly colored lights and thought, she could get used to this.


	3. Chapter 3

Mako grew to greatly appreciate the discretion afforded by Chau’s brothel over the next several months. And no one at the still-running Shatterdome seemed to suspect anything of her frequent evening absences. If Mako could pilot a jaeger into another dimension, she could most definitely go for a walk around Hong Kong to ‘clear her thoughts’.

To be fair, she did often pay Jack a visit to clear her thoughts. And to just blow off steam and frustration, both sexual and otherwise. Acting as Herc’s second in command came easily to her, but often left her near crawling out of her skin with desire and trying not to squirm in her seat after fourteen hours of meetings and travel and close quarters with the man. 

Spending all day smelling his aftershave, listening to his voice, and watching the muscles in his back and arms play underneath the stupidly worn henleys he still wears sometimes grew torturous. Knowing she had Jack to act as a fill-in kept her from embarrassing herself.

Of course there had been one memorably urgent visit after a lengthy sparring session with Herc, which had ended with him pinning her to the mat with the bo staff, but also most of his body before pulling away after a too-long-not-long-enough moment. And if she’d handed Jack the shower curtain rod from Room 700’s adjoining bathroom and told him to pin her down and fuck her on the floor, well, that was nobody’s business but her own, now, was it?

But she and Herc had fallen into an easy rhythm, they usually arrived at their shared offices within minutes of each other in the morning, took turns making the trip to get more coffee, making sure the other was remembering to eat. They shared the workload of rebuilding the world like they’d shared the workload of saving it.

The new prototype jaegers were almost finished. These machines were built to restore, rather than destroy, to be an invaluable tool to the worldwide rebuilding effort. While Raleigh traveled the globe to bring in sponsor money to pay for them, Mako designed them, and Gipsy’s old restoration team created them.

It all worked so seamlessly.

After lunch one day, Tendo poked his head into Mako and Herc’s shared office space. Her desk was turned sideways, in front of and across from Herc’s so that they could talk to each other without having to bother with the phone. There had been a door between the two areas at some point, but it was long gone by the time they’d claimed it for their own purposes; close to LOCCENT and the mess, and equidistant to both of their living quarters, no other spot would have done.

And if the layout made it easier for Mako to sneak a peek when Herc bent to get something from the low filing cabinet near his desk, she wasn’t about to complain about a missing door.

“Hey hey, party people, how’re we all doin’ today?” Both of them rolled their eyes at Tendo’s choice of phrasing.

“Doing fine, Mr. Choi, what can we do for you?” Herc was in an easy mood, a day free of dealings with the UN did that for him.

“Well, you know the new PONS system we’ve been working on for the new jaegers, right?” Tendo asked.

Mako rose from her desk and crossed the office to Herc’s, he had to be out of coffee by now, even if they’d just eaten lunch. She joined in the conversation on the way, “yes, you were designing it to put less strain on the pilot teams, correct?”

Tendo nodded, “yes indeedy, and I’m pretty sure we’ve got it right, all we need is a couple of guinea pigs to give it a quick test.”

He raised his eyebrows and glanced back and forth between the two of them.

Herc caught on first, “you mean us?”

Mako’s stomach dropped.

“Of course I mean you, you’re the only ones on base that have experience with the old tech, you can tell us if this one is better or worse,” Tendo said.

“We could wait until Raleigh gets back,” Mako said, “he and I have already proven to be drift compatible,” there, that could save her.

Tendo gestured at Herc, “yeah, well Raleigh won’t be back for days, so it’s good we’ve got Mr. Universally Compatible over here. Don’t need any more delays than we’ve already had.”

Herc looked at her and shrugged, “would be nice to do something useful, and if I have to read one more of these budget briefs I’m going to go bloody cross-eyed,” he gestured at the paperwork in front of him, “come on, Mori, what’s the harm?”

_Just that I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen. And I have a standing, flex appointment with a prostitute who looks exactly like you, who I asked for, who I call by your name._

_Oh, and could you not lean back in your chair and smile and raise your eyebrows at me like that? Because it’s taking every ounce of willpower I have not to climb across this desk and ride your cock as hard as I can in front of God and Tendo until neither of us can walk straight ever again, thanks._

She shrugged, “no harm. Let’s give it a try.”

* * * * *

She spent the entire time it took to get into the circuitry suit and facsimile drivesuit wracking her brain, trying to remember every tip, trick, or urban legend she’d ever heard about keeping things hidden in the drift.

She couldn’t come up with much.

Raleigh had said something once about envisioning building a wall in your mind, and placing whatever you wanted to hide behind that wall, and then not thinking about the wall once you were actually in the drift.

That could work, right?

As they were hooked into the harnesses, she built the wall, put all of her focus on that wall. She put Jack, Room 700, the kiss on her birthday in Sydney, and every sexual or romantic thought she’d ever had about Herc Hansen behind that wall.

It was a lot.

Tendo began to count down to the neural handshake and Mako looked over at Herc in the 01 harness, meeting his eyes with a small smile, keeping her thoughts calm and deliberate:

“Neural handshake initializing in 3…”

_...I respect and admire you as an accomplished pilot and colleague..._

“2…”

_...I value our working relationship that has been born of mutual respect and the trust I grew to place in you as the closest friend of my adoptive father..._

And all of that was true. She could do this. Everything would be just fine.

“1…”

_...also I want to wake you up with a blowjob every morning for the rest of our lives..._

Shit.

The drift sucked her in like a rip tide, the swirl of memories and thoughts just as powerful as she’d remembered, only they were different from the previous times she’d drifted.

_...running down the streets of Tokyo from a giant beast, screaming and begging for her mother…_

_...two young boys tearing through thick underbrush, holding plastic fighter jets over their heads, “Scotty, not so fast! You’ll fall again!”…_

_...her mother teaching her the perfect whisking technique to make proper green tea, flashing to Mako showing Sensei the same, in the family-style quarters of the Tokyo Shatterdome…_

_...Herc, in the backyard of a small ranch house, yelling to his wife to quick, get the Vegemite, he’d found a dropbear, see?! And holding a up a young boy by one leg, red-haired and squealing with laughter…_

_...Sensei striding into the jaeger bay in a black drivesuit…_

_...Chuck turning away in his battered green…_

_...You can always find me in the drift…_

_...he said if you have a shot, you take it..._

“Neural handshake, initiated.”

They were in it. They were in the drift and she’d kept everything a secret; Raleigh’s trick had worked.

She fought to keep the wall up. And through the handshake stabilizing, through the warm-up motions, she did.

But Herc knew something was off. And she knew that he knew. A thought filtered it’s way through the drift, _Jesus, kid, it’s like you’re thinking through a bullhorn, what’s going on?_

She tried to push through the impression that she was just out of practice and didn’t want a repeat of her last first-time drift with someone. It was a good cover. Until he spoke.

“Just relax, Miss Mori.”

And that broke it. The dam she’d built in her mind cracked apart and the more she fought it, the more came out.

_...the club….Chau’s offer….Jack….’just relax, Miss Mori’_ ….

Despite her efforts to hold them back, the memories streaked through their minds in full technicolor detail.

_….on her back, in what was basically a brothel, getting fucked hard with his name on her lips. By a man who looked so much like him he could walk right off the street into the Shatterdome and people would call him Marshal…._

_….her legs spread wide over the side of the bed, a head of red hair between them, twining her fingers through it and staring down into sharp blue eyes as she came against his mouth. And then a flash of a morning briefing; she’d said something sarcastic and he’d let out a rare laugh around his cup of coffee, blue eyes flashing at her from over the ceramic mug..._

Alarm bells sounded around them and she could hear Tendo’s voice over the comms, yelling about their vitals spiking and the instruments shorting out and _what in hell is happening in there you two it’s just a sim!_ but the drift wouldn’t break.

_….face down on the bed, her head pillowed on her crossed forearms, her fingers white-knuckling the soft linens, mewling and panting with her ass in the air; the flesh spanked red and beginning to show speckles of purple, a powerful vibrator up against her clit and three fingers mercilessly pumping in and out of her as she begged her way through her fourth or fifth, maybe even sixth orgasm….please Mr Hansen please may I come pleaseplease can I comeMrHansenplease…. the words spilling from her mouth like a prayer, weaving together until they made no longer made any sense…._

_….in a Shatterdome corridor after a video conference with the UN. Some fuckhead representative had thought he had the right to talk about Chuck, something about him being a ‘child soldier’ or some other bullshit, even referred to him as ‘Charles’. Chuck hadn’t been ‘Charles’ since he was two hours old. Herc had gone silent. Mako had, very diplomatically, told the rep where to shove his opinion and ended the call._

_They had left the office, Herc had turned to her in the hallway and opened his mouth to speak. She’d watched helplessly as his voice continued to fail him and his eyes began to water and turn red. As he’d given up trying to speak and forced his lips into a thin line, and nodded at her in thanks, she’d fought every screaming urge inside of her to reach up with both hands cradle his face in her palms; wanting desperately to pull him close to her and do something, anything to alleviate the pain, the anguish and the bone-crushing guilt she knew weighed on him every hour of every day…._

In the simulator, Mako sagged in her harness as the tendrils of that memory faded away, leaving them both with the image of how she’d laid in her bed that night, wracked with guilt and indecision. 

Guilt over how she spent her nights with a hooker to indulge her fantasies, while the man she fantasized about fought not to crumble under the weight of his grief, alone in his quarters, and the indecision waging war within her over whether or not she should seek him out.

But what good would it do if she showed up at his door? 

She could at least try, though, he was probably lonely, she could maybe take that away for a little while, couldn’t she? 

But wouldn’t that only make it worse? On top of everything else, having to deal with the attentions of a love-sick girl, who was harboring a sixteen-year-old’s crush for a man she couldn’t have, a man who would never want her? 

She was supposed to be helping him rebuild the PPDC, not doodling his name in the margins of her notebook.

Neither of them said anything as the drift was finally disconnected, the voice of the AI informing them both that the drift sequence had failed.

She could barely breathe, her legs felt like lead, her thoughts began to swirl and screech like a tornado ripping through a town, she could hear nothing but the blood pounding in her ears and the sickening hammer of her heartbeat.

“Mako…” Herc’s voice broke through the chaos, soft, like he was speaking to an animal that he wasn’t sure was friendly, but it snapped her from the mess that her mind was spiraling into.

She hit the release on the console, unlocking her from the harness, and turned and bolted from the sim’s conn pod. She vaguely registered Herc calling for her to come back as she pushed her way through the crowd of techs trying to force their way in.

She ran through the corridors, on autopilot, the heavy boots of the drivesuit slowing her down and making her gait awkward and clunky. She didn’t care. She got to her room and punched in her access code, gloved fingers flying over the keypad, hoping with whatever hope she could scrounge that there weren’t too many people around to hear her starting to sob.

She made it through the door, flinging it shut behind her and collapsed.

She wailed, in a heap on the ground, cursing and pounding her fists into the floor. Unable to breathe, she pulled off her helmet and heaved it against the wall with a shout. It hit a shelf and sent a handful of books tumbling to the floor, she barely noticed, leaning back on her heels with her face buried in her hands, angry, wet sobs wrenching their way from her chest.

It was done now. She’d have to leave. Leave her home, the last place she and Sensei had fought the monsters together. Herc won’t want anything to do with her, a fucking pervert who was obsessed with him. He’d send her somewhere; to one of the reopening Shatterdomes around the globe, Anchorage, Lima, Sydney.

She choked out a sick laugh as she thinks of Sydney. The fucking Sydney Shatterdome. Where he’d kissed her on her birthday. Why did he have to fucking kiss her on her fucking birthday? None of this would have happened if he’d never fucking kissed her on her birthday…

She turned to face her bed, laying her head and arms on the thin mattress, and sobbed quietly into the blanket. What exactly did she think wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t done that? She wouldn’t want him? Wouldn’t be attracted to him?

Wouldn’t have fallen in love with him?

She’d have to be an idiot to believe that.

With a sigh, she reached under her bed and pulled out her toolbox. As she set to work unscrewing the armor on the drivesuit, she wished, not for the first time since Pitfall, that she could go to Sensei’s office and ask him what she should do.

Sensei always knew what to do.


	4. Chapter 4

Three days later, Raleigh returned from his appearance at the UN.  He heard the gossip about Mako and Herc's giant failure in the drift simulator before he was even back to the Shatterdome.

After dropping his bags in his room and grabbing some sandwiches from the mess, he made his way to Mako's room.  When his first two knocks went unanswered, he added some backup vocals, "Mako! Maaaak-oooooo!   _Makomakomakomakomako_ \--"

She flung the door open, "you are a child."

"Yeah, I know - hungry?"  He held out one of the sandwiches, "it's ham and cheese.  I think."

Mako took the sandwich from his outstretched hand and opened the door wider for him to come in.  He flashed her a smile and made his way over to her small, round dining table, grabbing one of the chairs and turning it around so that he could sit leaning on the back, facing her, "so, what'd I miss?"

She sank down into the other chair and eyed Raleigh, "you know, don't you?"

"Of course I know!  This is the only decent gossip this place has had for months," he unwrapped his sandwich while he talked, "what, you thought no one was gonna talk about it?"

Mako just groaned.

Raleigh laid one arm across the top of the chair and picked up his sandwich with the other, "You managed to drift with my disaster area of a brain, and Herc is universally compatible, so something must have gone really, _really_ wrong," he gestured at her with the sandwich and took a bite.

"So, talk to me about it," he said through his mouthful of food.

She took a breath, drew herself up a bit straighter, "he saw some things."

"Herc's drifted with like fifteen different people, he’s seen everything," he said.

"Well this was coming from me, it's different," she said.

"Ok, so what kind of things did he see?"  He raised an eyebrow at her, "was it....," he dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper, "sex things?"

At her silence, Raleigh whooped out a laugh, "Mako!  Holy shit, what was it?  You have to tell me, pilot's code," he pointed at her with the sandwich.

"There's no such thing as the 'pilot's code'," she said.

"Sure there is, it says you have to tell your copilot all about when you perv out on your senior officer in the drift so hard it throws you both out of alignment and almost scrambles the instruments," he said, his feet bouncing on the floor like an overexcited child’s.

"Raleigh."

"It's in the fine print!"

Mako pursed her lips.  Raleigh took a bite of his sandwich.

"If you can find it in yourself to calm down, I'll tell you," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Raleigh went still immediately and folded his arms across the back of his chair, placing the sandwich back on the table; he propped his chin on them and after swallowing his mouthful of food, gave Mako the sweetest, most innocent smile he could muster.

She sighed and continued, "do you remember when we went to that club a few months ago?  After the breach was sealed?  The one run by Hannibal Chau?"

"Vaguely, that was one hell of a party that night," he said.

"Do you remember the offer he made us?"

"I think-- oooooh yeah, the 'companions' or whatever he called them.  Is that it?" he asked, incredulous.

"There's more to it than that," at Raleigh's crooked eyebrow, she took a breath and continued, "I've gone back since then.  Several times," she fidgeted with the wrapping on her sandwich, talking about this was starting to feel like too much, even with Raleigh, maybe she _should_ be embarrassed, "many times, actually."

Raleigh gaped at her for a moment, and then started clapping, "Mako," he held one hand up for a high-five, "Mako," he wiggled it when she didn't reciprocate, "Maaakooo, come on!"

She glanced at him, his expression open and bordering on exuberant, and sheepishly raised her palm to bump against his outstretched one, “I don’t know why you’re so excited about this, it’s obviously a bad thing.”

“Why would it be a bad thing, Mako?” he asked, “look, I know you well enough to know you’re being _safe_ , so that’s not a concern. Chau knows he’d be skinned alive if anything happened to you at the hand, or dick,” he dodged Mako’s hand reaching out to smack his shoulder, “of one of his employees, and you’re a grown adult, so what does it matter if you go out and get your bangarang on with a hot stranger?” 

She sighed, but he knitted his eyebrows together and continued, “like Herc’s really in any place to judge that, anyway - he’s Australian. And you should have seen Manila, him and Scott met this group of Swedish college girls, I think there was like eight of them--”

“There’s more to it than that,” she said, echoing her earlier statement and stopping him from spiraling off into a story that she wasn’t entire sure she wanted to hear at the moment.

Raleigh’s mouth fell open again, “you are blowing my mind here, Mori,” he floundered for more words for a moment, “what, I-- what problem would Herc have-- does he _know_ the guy?”

“Raleigh--”

He continued on, not noticing she’d interrupted him, “is it like a buddy of-- oh shit oh shit is it his brother?!”

“Raleigh!”

“No one officially knows where Scott Hansen went after he got booted; hooo-ly shit, Mako, is Scott Hansen your--”

_”I asked for somebody who looked like Herc!”_ she shouted, cutting him off.

Raleigh stared at her.

“Chau asked me what I wanted and I said I wanted someone tall with broad shoulders and red hair,” Raleigh has never heard her talk this fast, “I asked for that because that’s what I wanted because I wanted someone who looked like H-herc, because I...I,” the words caught in her throat but there was no going back now, “I want Herc,” she finished with a sigh and buried her face in her hands. 

She really had gone and screwed everything up, hadn’t she? Herc had to have lost all respect for her, and now Raleigh would, too.

Raleigh was silent for several moments, which did nothing to alleviate Mako’s anxiety, but when her breathing started to become shallow and began to shake, he rose from his chair and moved around it to crouch in front of her.

“Mako,” he said. She didn’t respond.

“ _Mako_ ,” he tone stayed gentle as he reached up and pulled her hands away from her face, “Mako, look at me.”

Slowly, and with another shaking exhale, she did, “what have I done, Raleigh?

Raleigh was quiet for a moment, running his thumbs back and forth across the backs of her hands, “well it’s not like you thought he’d find out.”

“That’s very comforting now, thank you,” she tried to sound sarcastic, but even to her own ears she just sounded exhausted.

“Mako, I mean it; you didn’t think he was going to find out. And so what if you have a thing for him? You two have worked together for months since the Breach was closed and it’s never interfered, why would it be different now?”

“Because it _is_ different now, Raleigh,” she gripped his hands, trying to drive her point home, “it didn’t interfere before because he didn’t know. Now he knows,” she felt tears pushing at the backs of her eyes and tried to fight them off, “now he knows and it’s...it’s all _ruined_ now.”

Raleigh looked up at her, his expression open and understanding but still not comprehending what she meant, “how is anything ruined?”

She continued, “would you want to work with someone, every day, who goes to prostitutes that look like you?”

“One prostitute, Mako, singular,” Raleigh said, trying to lighten the mood.

“Not the point, Raleigh. Would you want to work with someone who does that?” She repeated the question.

Raleigh thinks for a moment, “that depends, are they hot?”

Mako snapped back upright, “Raleigh! You could at least try to take me seriously!”

“I am, I am, Mako,” he reached behind him and pulled his chair around so that he could sit again, bringing him up and level with her, “I think you need to talk to him.”

“Raleigh…”

“No, I mean it,” he shook his head and moved his hands up to grip her shoulders, “I know Herc is this stoic, hard-knocks, shoot-a-kaiju-in-the-face-with-a-flare-gun kinda guy. And yes, the way he found out about how you feel was...not great. But, Mako, he’s just a guy,” Mako knitted her eyebrows together at that, “he’s just a guy who likes to drink a beer and scratch his balls at the end of the day,” Mako slapped his shoulder, “and a guy who, if a kind, intelligent, beautiful woman, who he knew very well and respected very much, came to him and said ‘I wanna take off your pants and go for an adventure Down Under’--”

“Raleigh!”

“--okay, you can pick the phrasing- I really don’t think he would be all that averse to the idea,” he finished.

She sighed and rubbed her hands over her face, “you really think that’s what I should do?”

He nodded, “and if I’m wrong, we can switch places,” she arched an eyebrow at him, “no, I’m serious! You can go jetting all over the world, getting all dressed up, kissing diplomatic ass day in and day out, and I’ll take your place as Herc’s number two: I can find some short skirts and do that whole Basic Instinct thing,” Mako groaned and stood from her chair.

Raleigh followed suit, “maybe I’ll put on some lipstick that’s way too bright for my skin tone and blow on his coffee all sexy-like,” he mimed blowing on a cup of coffee as Mako picked up her sandwich and moved to the bed, “it’ll be great, he’ll love it.”

Mako rolled her eyes and sat down on the bed, turning so that her back was against the wall behind it, “if you’re finished, why don’t you tell me about your trip and take my mind off of all of this.”

He joined her on the bed, letting both booted feet hang over the side, “just think about what I said, at least?”

She sighed but nodded at him, “I will think about it. Now tell me about New York.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you still reading! Not quite as long between updates this time :)

Mako did consider Raleigh’s advice. And decided to ignore it. 

She continued to stay in her quarters, do her work there, and sneak in and out of the office at obscene hours to drop it off and retrieve new assignments.

Her avoidance measures were forcibly brought to an end two nights later, when there was a knock on her door. And another. And then another. And then just long, continuous knocking. For a minute and fifteen seconds before she could hear her neighbors starting to shout and she made her way to the door.

“Come on, Mori, you know I know the override code,” Herc’s voice coming through the thick metal smothered her flicker of hope that the person at the door was just Raleigh being a pest.

She drew in a breath and let it out through her nose. This was it, she supposed, time to face the music. She could do this, she just had to keep cool. She opened the door.

The first thought that came to her mind was that the universe has be to fucking with her.

Herc was leaning against her door jamb, one arm raised and poised to keep knocking, the other holding a large paper take-out bag, with a six pack of Sapporo at his feet. Maybe it was the way the corridor lighting played off the planes of his face and the curve of his shoulders, maybe it was the fact that she hadn’t seen him in a week, maybe it was just the smell of the dim sum wafting up from the bag, but Mako was suddenly _hungry_.

So much for keeping cool.

Herc held up the bag, “haven’t seen you in the mess for a while, figured you could use some real food,” he reached down for the beer and Mako tried to will her eyes not to follow the lines of his back as he did so, “mind if I come in?”

She shook her head and stepped aside, fixing her eyes on the door as he walked past so that they couldn’t fix on him.

He crossed to the dining table and set down the bag and the beer, as well as a manila folder he’d had tucked under his arm. She watched as he gathered up the papers and various other items from the table and set them on her desk, then began pulling containers out of the bag and setting them out, “so I tried to order your favorites, hope I didn’t forget any. You know I’ll eat whatever.”

His back was to her, but she nodded, her feet rooted to the spot in front of the closed door.

After setting down two paper plates with napkins and chopsticks, Herc stepped back and held out one hand towards the table. His voice was soft when he spoke, “it’s just dinner, Mako.”

She nodded again and tried to turn her mouth up into a smile, but only one side was successful in the attempt. She took the chair closest to the door, Herc waited for her to sit before settling into the other one; close enough for her to see the flex of muscle as he clenched his jaw before reaching for a beer.

They ate in familiar, if tense, silence. Herc finished first and gathered his empty containers, dropping them in the empty take-out bag. He sat back in his chair and took another pull from his beer. Mako still couldn’t meet his eyes.

After a couple moments, Herc cleared his throat, then reached back to the take-out bag, but this time reached underneath it, pulling out the folder Mako had almost forgotten about.

And pulled out a transfer form. 

The one she had filled out on a whim, late one night, then stuffed into a stack of paperwork, meaning to throw it away but instead forgetting it ever existed.

Mako froze, a shumai halfway to her mouth. She watched Herc lay the form on the table between them, willing her hands not to shake and her breath to come back.

“So you avoid me for days and then leave this for me to find,” he said, “great plan.”

She pulled both lips between her teeth and set down her chopsticks, still silent and staring at her food. He wasn’t wrong about how she’d been acting, but it definitely hadn’t been a plan.

“Guess you forgot about the part where I have to sign this,” Herc said, “you know, being Marshal and all,” he kept his tone even, but he wasn’t happy, “so you need to justify this to me. Tell me why I should sign this and let you bugger off to Anchorage.”

When she said nothing, he continued, “look, apparently us drifting was a shit idea, but we’re far from the first people to crap out in the sim. Sure, it was as big a fuckin’ disaster as I’ve ever seen in a drift attempt, but neither one of us has ever done things halfway, have we?” He cracked a smile with that, Mako couldn’t bring herself to do the same.

He sighed and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, “explain this to me, Mako,” he tapped the form, his voice soft, “you’ve been hiding from me for a week, you haven’t said a word to me since I’ve been here tonight. I can’t fix this if you shut me out.”

Mako winced at his last statement, but still couldn’t find words.

Herc shook his head and continued, cautious, “if this is about what I...saw in the drift,” Mako’s spine went rigid, “it’s alright, kid. I get it.”

She fought to keep her expression controlled. He _got it?_ What exactly did he _get_ about it?

He took a breath, “you’ve known me since you were very young, Mako, and with everything that’s happened and now how closely we work together, I can see how you, um,” he cleared his throat, the tips of his ears going red, “how you could get confused, about... things.”

Ice formed in the pit of her stomach.

“I’m not confused, Herc,” her voice rasped a bit, but stayed level.

Herc sighed, “you are, Mako. You’re a young kid, and I’m not angry or anything but you shouldn’t be letting something like this keep you locked in your room, he scrubbed his hands over his face and dropped them back to his lap, palms up, “trust me, one day, sooner than you think, you’re going to meet a nice bloke and realize how silly this whole thing is. Now can we cut the bullshit and just forget this ever happened?”

Raleigh’s advice rang in her ears, _if a kind, intelligent, beautiful woman, who he knew very well and respected very much, came to him..._ so much for that.

“I’m not confused,” she repeated, no rasp in her voice this time.

She could live with keeping her feelings a secret, she could live with him knowing and the feelings not be mutual; she could not live with him knowing and thinking she was too immature and _confused_ for them to be real.

She was one of the youngest graduates of the Jaeger Academy. She had a perfect record in the sim - _51 drops, 51 kills_. She rebuilt a Mark-III jaeger from scrap. She was one of the two pilots that brought that jaeger into the breach and wiped the kaiju out of existence. She was the daughter of Stacker Pentecost.

One thing she was not, was _confused_.

Mako rose from her seat and crossed to the door, stepping aside to hold it open, “thank you for dinner, Mr. Hansen, but if you’ll excuse me, I have work I need to get back to.”

Herc stared at her from his seat, his mouth set in a thin line, the rest of his expression unreadable. After a moment he picked up the transfer form from the table and stood.

She watched him as he walked to the open door, keeping her expression firm, trying to keep any sign of the roiling anger and hurt from reaching her eyes.

He stopped in front of her and held her gaze. He folded the form in half and held it up between two fingers, “I expect to see you in our offices tomorrow, Miss Mori,” when she nodded, he stepped through the door, and turned his head back to her when he got to the first step.

“I’ll approve the transfer when you’ve found your replacement,” and with that, he left.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my lovelies who are still reading!
> 
> This has taken forever, I actually had the chapter after this written before this one wormed it's way into my brain.
> 
> The tense use is different than the rest of the story here, but you'll see why.

Herc leaves the office, bleery-eyed from near exhaustion, not surprised to not see another soul walking the halls at this hour. After retrieving Max from Striker’s crew in the jaeger bay and taking the lumbering ball of wrinkles for a walk, he returns to his quarters and, once inside, unclips the leash.

As Max makes his way back to his toy-filled bed in the corner to lazily gnaw at a chew, Herc heads for the bathroom; anxious for the scalding hot shower, the steam, the noise of the water to rinse off and drown out the day.

Once in, he faces the shower-head and braces both forearms on the tile in front of him, letting his head drop forward into the spray.

Another shit day.

Another shit day of tense, uncomfortable silence. It’s been a week since he’d gotten Mako to return to their offices, hoping it would ease the lingering tension after their drift and get things moving back to normal, but he’d misjudged. As always.

She thought she was in love with him. He sighs and rubs the back of his neck, pushing at the stiff muscles. Maybe she thought she was in love with him, but there’s no way she really was.

She missed Stacker. That’s all it really came down to. She missed Stacker and he made a decent second choice. Some twisted form of hero worship that had her so mixed up.

Maybe she wanted the man he used to be. The Mark I pilot on the cover of Rolling Stone with the stupid bomber jacket and the shit-eating grin; brash, young, a rockstar.

She didn’t want the man he actually was, the man he’d become. The man who sealed his wife and son’s death warrants, who laid in bed at night listening to the voices of dead men rasp across his brain. The man whose place Stacker Pentecost had died in, because he just had to be careless and disengage from his fucking motion harness with a kaiju right outside.

No, she didn’t want that man.

Not that he hadn’t thought about what it would be like if she did.

Hell, he’d thought about it today.

They barely spoke now, even when Mako hadn’t been able to find an excuse to be out the office. Meetings and briefings they used to take on together she now insisted she could handle on her own, and Herc was growing tired of fighting her on it.

But today, today they’d had a meeting with the UN budget office, and that was always a two-person job. Those meetings meant presenting a united front, meant acting like nothing was wrong between them. 

They also meant Mako’s black skirt.

The skirt she wore when she traded her normal fatigues and sturdy button down for an outfit that made her appear soft, so they couldn't tell that she was the one getting something over on them, not the other way around.

Flowing black chiffon, it hit her knees but couldn't hide the muscular swell of her ass and accentuated the swing of her hips as she walked. When she crossed her legs in her chair, there was just enough of a hint of the lean tone of her thighs beneath the fabric to force Herc to start reciting rugby stats in his head to cut his thoughts off at the pass.

He'd thought about that skirt a lot.

She sat on his desk once, in that skirt. Had brought him another cup of coffee and they toasted to how much more money she'd pulled out of the guy who mispronounced her name four different ways during their meeting.

He'd chuckled into the coffee mug but, sometimes, when that conversation replays in his mind, he takes note of just how close his hand was to her thigh. Of how easy it would have been to push the fabric up, pull her knee closer to him and lean down to move his face to its inside.

He'd take it slow, in case she didn't want him to, but in his dreams at night, she did. Gently press his face to her knee, to the skin on the inside of her thigh that he was sure must be so, so soft.

He'd push her knee further open with just his fingertips and move up between her thighs. He'd scratch the rough stubble on his cheek up the delicate skin there - maybe she'd like that. Angie always did.

He’d bring his face forward and move up to settle into the heat of her; to lick into her, open her folds with his tongue and bury his mouth into her wetness. She'd taste so good, wouldn't she? Tangy and musky and sweet.

Herc barely registers his left hand drifting down to where his dick has started to get hard, gripping the base and huffing out a breath. His fist slides forward and his thumb swipes, unbidden, over the tip; as the phantom taste of Mako hits the back of his throat.

He'd lap at her, build her up until her clit was plump and firm with arousal. Then tilt his head just a bit to get his lips around the slippery nub and gently suckle at it. 

Maybe she'd grip her nails into his scalp and leverage herself against his lips as he set a steady rhythm flicking the firm tip of his tongue against her clit. Maybe she’d brace a hand on the desk and push them both impossibly closer together so that he’d have to adjust his head to be able to breathe.

Part of him wonders what she'd sound like, if she'd whimper and pant and if maybe his name would be in there somewhere; if she’d come with a shout or quietly lose her breath for a quick moment before moaning through the rest.

The shower stall further fills with steam as he tells himself he should stop, shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be jerking off thinking about what Mako’s cunt tastes like and how she sounds when she comes. But a weaker part of him pulls up something put into his brain by their drift. 

_...please Mr Hansen please may I come pleaseplease can I come..._

He bites back the low whine that tries to escape him as his fist starts to move faster and his hips flick forward on their own accord. He drops his head to meet his other hand, balled up against the tile, and bites into the meat of his fist to stifle the sounds that work their way out of his throat, even though he’s the only one who can hear them.

He’d lap at her through the aftershocks, broad, gentle strokes, savoring the taste of her. 

And maybe she'd push his head back and lean down to kiss him, and he could press her slick wetness against those plush red lips, open his own and let her lick her taste from his tongue. He'd give her that, no question.

Or maybe she'd hold him there, keep her hands dug into his scalp and demand he keep going, get her off again.  He'd give her that, too.

God, he'd give her everything.

His orgasm takes him by surprise at that thought, the sharp grunt that shreds its way out of his throat echoing off the hard tile of the shower walls and back into his ears.

The fog in his mind clears quickly and within moments he’s left standing with his softening dick in one hand, the hot water of the shower roaring around him, watching the milky strands of his release swirl around the drain at his feet.

With a growl, he brings the hand that was braced against the tile to the chrome handle in front of him and twists it, as hard as he can, all the way to the blue line of the tap.

He bites back a sharp grunt as the water turns icy against his skin, and hisses as it hits the oversensitive flesh of his spent cock, grabbing for the soap to wash quickly and efficiently, all pleasure in the act gone.

Who the fuck does he think he his? Giving himself a quick tug in the shower and thinking about Mako to get himself off? A girl young enough to be his daughter and fuck if she hasn’t lost more than most people in this ‘dome to the Kaiju War.

She doesn’t deserve someone like him.

Correction, he doesn’t deserve someone like her. She deserves someone so much better. Someone like Raleigh Becket.

Or, hell, someone who could at least give her a future.

What kind of future could she have with him?

The same kind of a future anyone had with him: a short one.

And Mako deserves better than that, doesn’t she?

Once satisfied that he was clean, on the outside at least, Herc twists the tap off, grabbed the towel from where it was slung over the wall of the stall and dries off, fighting his body’s urge to shiver.

After pulling on an undershirt and boxers, he hits the switch for the overhead light on his way to the bunk, hoping to collapse into at least a couple hours sleep before some nightmare ripped him back to consciousness.

The last thought he’s aware of, before exhaustion claims him, isn’t entirely his own.

A laugh, a distinct laugh; the one that always indicated the point in the argument when Chuck found a line that he knew he shouldn’t cross, but was going to anyway.

That laugh, cruel and vicious, bubbling up from the back of Herc’s mind…

_...stupid old man..._


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a twofer, since the last one took so damn long!

Three weeks.

Three weeks and Herc still hadn’t chosen Mako’s replacement.

She’d set up interview after interview with dozens of highly qualified candidates, with actual educations beyond the Jaeger Academy, and experience in positions similar to hers.

And he’d dismissed every single one. Last week he stopped making up reasons for why they wouldn’t be any good. Mako couldn’t figure out what he could possibly be getting out of torturing her like this, most likely payback for the images she’d seared into his brain through the drift, but she wasn’t about to let him win, even though she felt she probably deserved it.

She arrived before him every morning, left after him in the evening. 

Gone was the easy banter that had existed between them, the collaboration and the teamwork, the shared looks of annoyance and disgust when another mountain of paperwork rolled in for them to do or they were summoned to yet another UN conference call. 

Gone were the moments when they’d prop each other up when one was having a particularly hard day holding their footing amongst the world swirling with change around them, and the grief and loss that held fast to them both.

In it’s place was silence. Heavy, loaded, uneasy silence. Before, she would use paperwork that needed his signature as an excuse to prop herself on the edge of his desk for a couple of minutes, checking to see if he needed more coffee and if she could catch the scent of his aftershave. Now she waited for him to leave to refill his own cup and then placed the pages on his desk, sticky notes pointing to where he needed to sign instead of her fingers, his chair empty and cold.

Herc could barely stand to look at her anymore, she could tell. A few days ago she’d been looking through the files in her bottom desk drawer for something, perched on the edge of her chair, and after several minutes she’d noticed the flash of the silver tips of his boots and straightened up. 

He’d been standing a few feet from her desk, facing her, she couldn’t read the expression on his slightly flushed face, but didn’t see anything good in it. They’d made eye contact after a moment, and he’d immediately whipped his head to look at anything but her, muttering something about coffee and tearing his way out of their offices.

She’d gone to see Jack once since the failed drift sim, and hated it. It didn’t feel like an indulgent escape anymore, it had felt shameful, and some irrational part of her kept telling her she was hurting Herc further, even though he had no way of knowing what she did or where she went at night. 

Jack had picked up on it, of course, had known something was wrong before her shirt was even off. She’d told him everything, and he’d tried to give her some advice, but ultimately didn’t know what to tell her. They’d hugged and she’d left Room 700 for the last time.

She hadn’t slept decently since before the Breach was sealed, but new nightmares had joined the old over the past weeks.

Today, she’d spent the morning putting together profiles on three very promising candidates to take her place. She slid the three green folders into a manila envelope and placed a sticky note with “Replacement Candidates” written neatly on it on the front, then licked the adhesive flap to seal it. 

She had the new software installation in LOCCENT to oversee today, so when Herc left for lunch, she placed the envelope in the center of his desk and left the office for the day.

* * * * *

Mako was headed back to her quarters after a long afternoon in LOCCENT. Flipping through the stack of papers she carried back with her to review that evening, she noticed she was missing a budget brief that she and Herc had a meeting about with a rep from the UN the next morning.

With a sigh, she turned and headed back to her office, it was after seven, so Herc would be gone by then. She assumed so, anyway.

She pushed the door open and stole a quick glance at his desk. Though she’d been right, he wasn’t there, she couldn’t help the flash a disappointment she felt at the sight of his large, empty, leather chair.

Ignoring that inconvenient emotion, she made her way to her own desk and rifled through the stacks until she found what she needed. She found the briefing, gathered her evening’s work back up in her arms, and turned to leave, casting one more look at Herc’s desk, despite herself, and noticed something.

The manila envelope she’d left for him that morning, the one with the resumes and background checks of the candidates for her replacement.

In the trash. Unopened. Her sticky note was crumpled in the ball on the floor next to the wire trash can, like he’d tossed it without looking where it was going.

Mako slammed her stack of papers down on her desk and crossed the room to Herc’s. She snatched the envelope out of the small metal wastebasket, gripping it hard in both hands. Her vision blurred with angry tears, her breath turned to hard pants, forced out through her nose.

He _was_ doing this on purpose. He wasn’t even bothering to find her replacement. What in the hell was wrong with him?

She couldn’t take it anymore. This was over. Herc may be getting some sick kind of pleasure out of keeping her around after she’d humiliated herself so spectacularly, but she wasn’t going to stand it anymore.

With the envelope clutched in one hand, she stormed out of their offices and made her way to Herc’s quarters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gee, I wonder what they're gonna talk about :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life has been *insane* these last few weeks(but I have a job and income again, joy of joys!), so here's almost 3,000 words of the hardest chapter of anything I've ever written. And there's still more to come. I love you all for reading :)

“Herc!”

Mako pounded on the door to Herc’s quarters, shouting his name.

“Herc, open the door!”

She continued to pound, not caring if anyone came down the corridor and saw her, crazed, demanding that he let her in.

Before she could shout his name again, the door flew open, and Herc stood in the doorway, dressed in his usual green trousers, worn henley and bare feet, concern painting his features, “What’s going-- is everything alright?”

She held up the envelope, “no, everything is not alright.”

Herc’s expression flattened at the sight of the envelope, and he stepped aside, gesturing with one hand for her to come in.

She marched past him to the center of the room, stopping at the small dining table, covered in papers and folders, a half empty beer bottle near where he’d been sitting. She didn’t turn as he walked past her to the mini fridge by the desk, opening it and pulling out another beer.

“Want one?” He held it towards her, but lowered it at the hard look on her face, “guess that’s a no,” he closed the fridge and turned to lean with his back against the desk, crossing his arms over his broad chest. His eyes flicked from the floor to the table and back again. Mako kept her eyes on him.

Neither of them spoke for a minute.

Mako broke first, her voice even, trying hard not to betray just how angry she was, “why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” He didn’t look up at her.

“Why won’t you let me leave?”

“A suitable replacement hasn’t been found, you know that,” there was no conviction behind his words, like he didn’t even believe it, himself.

“Bullshit.”

That made him look up, “excuse me?”

“I said, bullshit,” she said through gritted teeth, “you’re not even trying to choose someone. I’ve given you dozens of candidates, interviewed some myself, and now,” she held up the manila envelope, “now you’re not even bothering to pretend.”

He said nothing, just pressed his lips into a thin line, his eyes on the envelope in her hand.

Now that she could see his face, really see it turned towards her, Mako felt her heart sink.

He looked like hell. 

If he said he’d gotten more than a hour’s sleep a night for the last week, she wouldn’t believe him. His skin was pasty and almost grey, he had circles under his eyes that looked like they’d been put there with charcoal. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the last month. 

And it was her fault.

She had stressed him out this badly, put this extra work and responsibility on him. While she had missed them working together like they had, he’d needed her by his side; needed his second in command. 

And she’d left him out to dry. 

Because she was embarrassed. Because she was angry. She had some nerve pounding on his door, shouting at him.

She laid the envelope down on the table in front of her.

“Herc,” she said quietly, “I think it’s best for both of us if I leave. We can’t work together anymore,” she kept her eyes on the table, “any of these three men would be an excellent candidate for my position.”

Herc was silent for a moment, then scrubbed his palms over his face and stilled. He mumbled something behind his hands that Mako couldn’t hear.

“What was that?” She looked back up at him.

“Do you even really want to leave? Or are you just running because of what happened in the drift sim?”

His words hung heavy in the air for a long moment before she pulled up the courage back up to speak, “no,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, the fight slipping out of her.

“No to which one?” He asked.

“No, I don’t want to leave. This is my home, now, but...” she couldn’t finish her thoughts out loud, but they rang out in her mind, loud as church bells, _this is where you are, this is where I can know you’re alright, that you’re getting up every morning, and even if I can’t be with you the way I want, at least I can see you and know you’re alright and--_

Herc sighed and slid his hands down slowly, stopping them with his fingers over his mouth, “I don’t want you to leave, either.”

Mako blinked. “What?” She asked.

He dropped his hands down to the desk, gripping the edge and staring once again at the floor, “I don’t want you to leave. I’m not going to pick your bloody replacement because there isn’t anyone that can replace you.”

 _He doesn’t mean that in the way you want_ , she thought, and found her voice again, “but I’ve asked to leave and you should respect that request--”

“So if neither one of us wants you to leave, why are you so fucking bent on leaving?” His head and his tone picked back up as he cut her off, frustration creeping into the words, “answer me that, because this is getting ridiculous.”

Her previous anger started to return. She took a deep breath and kept her voice even, “you know why.”

“Oh, don’t give me that shit,” he said, rolling his eyes, “I already told you: I’m not angry, I’m not judging you, I know that wherever this… crush, or whatever it is, came from, it’ll go away. It’s no reason to act like a child and run away.”

He raised both eyebrows her at her expectantly, “so, now, tell me. Why are you insisting on leaving?”

 _No reason to act like a child..._ Mako drew herself up straighter, feeling her anger and hurt rise once more and creep up her spine, “you don’t respect me.”

“Oh, what the fuckin’ hell are you on about--”

“You don’t respect me,” she repeated herself, louder and stronger, “you think I’m confused. You think I’m childish. And you’re lying to me.”

A beat of silence passed between them. Mako heard the blood roared in her ears, everything she’s tamped down tight starting to shake loose. Herc pushed himself off of the desk, standing upright and crossing his arms over her chest.

“I’m lying to you?” His tone was deceptively flat, “what, exactly, am I lying to you about?”

“You are angry with me. In fact, you’re disgusted with me,” his eyebrows shot up in disbelief and his mouth gaped open as he tried to stutter out protests but she continued, “we don’t speak anymore. And I know I share the blame in that, but I can tell that you cannot stand me. You won’t even look at me, that’s how disgusted you are.”

The memory of him virtually running out of their office after watching her at her desk flashed in her mind, fueling the hurt and anger powering her words.

“So I don’t know if you’re getting some kind of kick out of keeping me here, but I can’t do this anymore. It was different before, when only I knew, but if this is how things are going to be now that you know--”

“What? Now that I know what?!” He shouted, cutting her off, “I already said, I don’t care about the bloody hooker!”

“It’s not that!” She shouted back.

“Then what is it?”

_"It’s that I love you!"_

The words flew from her mouth before she could stop them. She fought back the urge to clap both hands over her mouth, as though that could force them back in. 

But there it was. Her heart slammed against her ribs as the air between them grew thicker with tension. No dancing around it anymore. She’d said it and he’d have to answer, one way or another.

A long moment passed before Herc sighed and shook his head, “no you don’t,” his voice was soft, a little sad, “I know you think you do, but you don’t, come on now.”

There it was again: him not believing her, thinking she’s some child with a child’s feelings who doesn’t know her own heart and mind.

She pursed her lips angrily before continuing, “I love you, Herc. I know it. I know it like I knew how badly I wanted to be a jaeger pilot. I rebuilt a jaeger from scrap, I killed four kaiju, helped closed the breach, and, in case you haven’t been paying attention, I have run this Shatterdome and the PPDC, _with you_ , for months!” She was yelling again, but didn’t care in the slightest, “you think I could have done all that if I was some silly little girl, Herc? Do you honestly think that!?”

“Of course I don’t fucking think that!” He yelled back at her, “I’d have to be bloody stupid to think that, Jesus Christ--”

She cut him off, “then why do you keep saying I don’t feel the way I do?”

“Because you shouldn’t!” He shouted, leaning towards her, blue eyes wild and bright.

She had no idea what to do with that except repeat his own words back to him, “I _shouldn’t?"_

“No, you shouldn’t!” Herc closed the distance between them, angrily gripping her upper arms, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to let her know she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Do you know what happens to the people I care about?”

She couldn’t move, could only stare at him, eyes wide and locked with his, which were frantic and searching and desperate.

“They die. My wife. Stacker,” he swallowed and dropped his head, “my son,” he took a deep breath, obviously trying to suppress the shudder that still came through, “they all die.”

Silence hung between them once more and she watched the anger suddenly drain from his expression, leaving him looking more drawn and empty than she’d seen him in a long time, “fuck, you know what? You’re right, you should leave.”

Her stomach dropped. She felt frozen in place, even when he let go of her arms and turned to lean against the table, his eyes on the floor.

“You should leave,” his voice now was painful to listen to, like he was talking around hot coals in his throat, “me keeping you here so that I can see you, and watch you, and,” he took a shaking breath through his nose, “make sure you’re alright... it’s selfish, that’s all it is.”

She watched as he scrubbed one hand across his face and gestured toward the envelope on the table, “you decide which candidate you think is best, I’ll sign your transfer form tomorrow.”

Her heart ached. Ached for him, for how much more he put on himself than she even knew. That he was somehow personally responsible for Scissure attacking Sydney, or for Pitfall going the way it did.

That if he loved her back, she’d die too.

She couldn’t keep doing this to him. She knew that leaving would break her heart, would make things a bit more difficult for a while for Herc, professionally, having to train someone new to do everything that she does, but she couldn’t do this to either of them anymore.

If he thought that somehow just being in his presence was a danger to her, then he would never, could never love her back. And every day she spent here made his guilt worse, compounded his sorrow.

But she could change that, she could take that away. She could leave.

She could take the pain of leaving everything, including Herc, behind if she could do so with the knowledge that it, in some way, made him feel better, alleviated some of the guilt and anguish that she knew he carried.

She moved the few steps to stand in front of him, moving slowly and cautiously, as though he’d spook and run off otherwise. Gathering her strength, she clenched her hands together in front of her, her fingers hooked in and woven between each other as she took a deep breath and willed her voice to stay steady.

“Herc...I know what you think about how I feel - that I’m a young, stupid girl with a stupid crush on a man that I shouldn’t have a crush on. I know that. I know that because I used to think the same thing. I thought that when I was sixteen and I lied to Sensei about why I wanted to go with him to Sydney. I thought that when I graduated from the Academy and desperately wanting to be drift compatible with someone so that I could pilot. I wanted to avenge my family, and I wanted to make Sensei proud, but I also wanted to make you proud.”

His eyebrows knitted together briefly. At least he was listening, “I wanted you to look at me the way you looked at other pilots, to look at me and see more than his daughter, more than the scared little girl with the blue coat and no English.”

Her mind and her mouth felt disconnected. She’d never told anyone these things, she was pretty sure Raleigh hadn’t even seen them in the drift. And now the words were pouring out like water from a tap. But she’d had enough of regrets that stemmed from things left unsaid. If she was going to leave, she was going to leave with everything out in the open, all her cards on the table.

“That’s what I thought,” she continued, as she took one sure step closer to him, “when I would lie in my bed and think about you when I touched myself,” Herc winced and looked further away but she kept going, “it’s what I thought when Chau offered me a ‘companion’ as a thank-you for saving the world. He said ‘anyone I wanted’. So I asked for a man who looked like you, because I thought that maybe that would be enough, I thought that I could get it out of my system and stop hoping for something that I couldn’t have.”

She closed the distance between them and gently rested both hands on his forearm, feeling the muscles bunch and shift under the warm skin as he kept his arms crossed tightly over his chest and clenched his fists tighter behind his biceps.

“It worked, at first. It was fun, it was distracting - I had something to think about beside the fact that I had no idea what the world was going to be now. But it wasn’t you, and I wanted it to be you, wanted to be here. I wanted to be here with the small beds and scratchy sheets and our drafty office with the bad coffee and your big, ugly desk.”

He smiled slightly at that, though it looked more like a grimace, “and I wanted to be here because this is where you are, and I wanted to be where you are. I still do.”

Her throat felt tight as she reached up to bring her hands to his face, softly laying her fingertips against the strong planes of his jaw, feeling his stubble scratch under her skin. He visibly flinched and huffed a quick breath through his nose at the contact, “but, now, after all of this, it’s best if I leave. Even though I don’t want to, it’s what’s best. I don’t want to hurt you any further, I’m sorry.”

He still didn’t look up at her, his eyes fixed just past her face, on the floor or her shoulder, she couldn’t tell. She wanted so much to physically move his head to face her directly. This was the last time she’d see him, talk to him, be this close to him. 

All she wanted was for him to look her in the eye and see what she was saying was true, to know that not everyone who loved him was gone.

But rather than force him to look at her, she took a quick breath through her nose and leaned in, tilting her head up the smallest bit to press her lips to his. Her eyes shuttered closed and the world narrowed down to just the warm softness of the kiss.

Just once. Just this once. She could have this to carry with her when she left for Anchorage, when she was lonely, when she was cold, when she just wanted everything to have gone differently and her life to be something it wasn’t.

She moved her lips lightly against his just a bit; she swore she felt a flicker of movement back, but whether it was genuinely Herc kissing her back, or just him flinching at the contact, she wasn’t going to analyze right now.

He looked stricken as she pulled back, his eyes pinched shut, face pale except for the spots of red high on his cheeks. She took a long, last look at him, trying to etch the details of his face into her memory.

 _please look at me..._ she thought, _please, just this once, before I go..._

He didn’t.

Mako swore she could hear the cracks forming in her heart as her chest tightened like a vice.

“I’ll go in the morning,” it hurt to speak and her voice dropped to a harsh whisper, “I...I’ll miss you,” as she let her hands fall away, back to her sides, her throat constricting as she turned and made her way to the door, her legs like lead as she walked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mirror, mirror, on the wall  
> Who's the meanest of them all?


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead! Massive apologies for how long this has taken, but it is super long and my life is super messy at the moment..
> 
> So go to the bathroom first and make yourself a drink because, in the immortal words of Tendo Choi, bitch is big.

_All she wanted was for him to look her in the eye and see what she was saying was true, to know that not everyone who loved him was gone._

_But rather than force him to look at her, she took a quick breath through her nose and leaned in, tilting her head up the smallest bit to press her lips to his. Her eyes shuttered closed and the world narrowed down to just the warm softness of the kiss._

_Just once. Just this once. She could have this to carry with her when she left for Anchorage, when she was lonely, when she was cold, when she just wanted everything to have gone differently and her life to be something it wasn’t._

_She moved her lips lightly against his just a bit; she swore she felt a flicker of movement back, but whether it was genuinely Herc kissing her back, or just him flinching at the contact, she wasn’t going to analyze right now._

_He looked stricken as she pulled back, his eyes pinched shut, face pale except for the spots of red high on his cheeks. She took a long, last look at him, trying to etch the details of his face into her memory._

_please look at me... she thought, please, just this once, before I go..._

_He didn’t._

_Mako swore she could hear the cracks forming in her heart as her chest tightened like a vice._

_“I’ll go in the morning,” it hurt to speak and her voice dropped to a harsh whisper, “I...I’ll miss you,” as she let her hands fall away, back to her sides, her throat constricting as she turned and made her way to the door, her legs like lead as she walked._

* * * * *

It was ten steps from the table where they stood to the door. 

At five, her hope that he would come after her died. 

At eight, she couldn’t fight the fat, wet tears that rolled down her cheeks as silence hung in the room; he didn’t even have anything to say to her.

At nine, she had to hold her breath to keep in the sob trying to wrench its way out of her chest.

At ten, all she could feel was blood pounding in her ears as she lifted a hand to pull the door open.

Her fingers were closing around the latch when a weight landed on her upper arm and spun her around. 

A warm, broad hand shoved up into her hair at the nape of her neck and gripped; the tears in her eyes obscured her vision but she didn’t need to see, didn’t need visual confirmation for her to know, wholly and completely, that it was him.

It was Herc, pulling her against his chest, firm and broad and warm, before capturing her lips with his in an embrace that drew that waiting sob up out of her lungs and kissed it away.

The kiss was deep, passionate, knee-weakening; every word in the book a truly amazing, life-affirming kiss, they were all created to describe this one. It lasted maybe a minute, maybe an hour, Mako couldn’t tell, but as they broke apart for breath, she panted and looked up to search out Herc’s eyes. They were closed but he gripped her hair by the roots at the nape of her neck and breathed out a hoarse, “Mako…”

She whimpered at the sound. The first time he’d said her name in weeks, it was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever heard.

“I, I thought you’d never…” she kissed him again, quickly, because how could she not? “...never want me.”

Their mouths met again and he made a sound into the kiss, breaking it to push their faces together in a different way, noses and cheeks pressing together, his breath hot against her jaw as he rasped, “how could I not want you?”

She let out a wet cry that was part laugh, part sob as more tears forced their way out and down her cheeks.

He held her tightly to him, his face pressed against her neck and jaw, breathing hard through his nose, “I’m so sorry, Mako,” he said, his voice rough, “for all of this, I’m… _God,_ Mako, I’m sor--”

“Don’t,” she cut him off, pushing him back enough that she could meet his eyes again, “it was my fault, too. All of this, these last few weeks, it just…”

It was Herc’s turn to cut her off, quickly pulling his face back from hers while he shook his head and drew back up to his full height. He took a deep breath and slid both hands around to cup her face, gently brushing the wetness from her cheeks with callused thumbs.

He gave her a small grin and spoke again in a low rumble, “let’s try this again,” then angled his head to bring their lips together once more.

The kiss was softer this time, warm and consuming. More like melting into each other than the crashing together like the first kisses had been. Mako moaned into his mouth and leaned forward to press their bodies together, her arms winding loosely around his neck as the kiss became more and more heated.

Herc crowded her against the door and pushed her back into the cold steel as he devoured her mouth. She slipped one arm fully around his broad shoulders, and brought her other hand to run her nails up the back of his neck.

A memory flashed quickly through her mind, of an old American movie she’d watched with Tamsin years ago, the film’s heroine being told by the dashing gentleman she hadn’t yet realized that she loved that she “should be kissed often, and by someone who knows how.”

The line had seemed silly at the time, but she more than understood it now.

His breaths came in hot pants, the desperation she heard in them matched the desperation in the way his fingers dug into her back - like she would disappear if he let go.

She tightened her grip on his shoulders in response, flattening her palm against his neck and pulling him impossibly closer to her by his shirt. She scratched her nails over his scalp, through the close-cropped ginger hair, and the sound he made into her mouth, something between a growl and a moan, and the way his grip tightened on her hips, made her want to scream out loud, made her want to laugh and cry and shout. But she wasn’t about to do any of those things, because any of them would involve separating her mouth from his, which she was not about to do if she could fucking help it.

Suddenly, she was off the ground. Herc lifted her up easily and held her against him, winding both arms around her back as he walked them back towards the bunk. She hitched her legs up around his hips, her breath coming out in a huff when he dropped them down onto the edge of the bunk with Mako in his lap, straddling his hips.

Herc pulled back long enough to grip the edges of her blouse and pull, the snaps popping apart so that he could push the garment down her arms and off, tossing it away and moving his hands to grip the hem of the black tank she wore underneath, pulling it up and sending it to join it’s companion on the floor.

Mako fought to catch her breath as he ran both rough, broad hands down her back pulled her hips froward against his own. He bent her slightly backward, pressing wet, reverent kisses down her breastbone, across her chest, and back up to capture her mouth again.

Grinding her hips down, Mako twisted her hands into the collar of his henley, the fabric soft under her hands, before tugging slightly then reaching to grip the back and pulled the damn thing up and over Herc’s head. Her hands were back on him before it hit the floor, hungrily eating up the expanse of warm skin and firm muscle, bunching and flexing under her palms.

Herc slid the straps of her bra from her shoulders, letting them lightly fall down her arms. Mako fought back a shiver as his fingertips slipped, feather light, around her back to unhook it, sliding it down and letting it drop to the floor. He run the pads of his thumbs back and forth over her nipples, teasing them to stiffened peaks while he plumped the firm flesh of her breasts in his hands.

Mako did shiver when he dropped his head down to capture one nipple with his lips, rolling the other between his thumb and forefinger. She arched her back into the wet heat of his mouth, moaning as his tongue swirled and flicked over the pebbled flesh.

He switched back and forth between both breasts, drawing a whine from her each time he pulled from one with a hard, biting suck. Arousal coiled tighter in her belly and she ground her hips down, panting and whining as she desperately sought some type of friction between her thighs, where she was wet and hot and aching.

She slid one hand from his shoulder, along his thickly muscled arm, to push his hand away from her breast and down lower, toward her waistband, “Herc, Herc, please,” her voice was barely above a rasp.

“ _Please_ ,” she repeated, bucking her hips up.

Herc grinned against her skin and pulled away, twisting the hand she held back to grip hers instead. He moved it back to his shoulder and ran both hands down her sides, coming down to hook his forefingers around the button on her trousers.

He looked up at her, something akin to mischief in his eyes, “don’t get impatient on me now, Miss Mori.”

She suppressed a shudder at how he said her name. It always sounded so, so good, but it was, unsurprisingly, even better when she was shirtless in his lap and her nipples were hard and tight and wet from his mouth.

“I said ‘please’, didn’t I?” She managed just the littlest bit of attitude, and relished the way it made him laugh.

“I suppose you did,” he said as he set to work on the fastenings of her pants.

She bit her lower lip hard and breathed in deeply through her nose, doing her damnedest to stay still while Herc took his sweet time undoing her pants’ button and fly. He pushed the waistband apart and as far down her hips as it would go with her thighs spread.

He teased his fingertips along the black waistband of her panties, grinning at her impatient whines, then turned his palm up against her abdomen and slid his hand inside the thin cotton. Two thick fingers slid between her folds, sliding down over her clit to circle over where she was slick and open, then back up to spread her wetness around.

He hummed again and brought his mouth to her collarbone, latching his lips onto the delicate skin there and sucking it between his teeth in hard pulses. She felt the blood beneath jump up and spark at the surface and knew it would leave a mark but her first thought was that she didn't care. Her second was that it would be low enough that no one else would see it.

 _Only he'll know it's there,_ she thought.

She turned his face up to hers with both hands, kissing him hard and long while Herc cupped and plumped and worked her breasts with his left hand, his right working steady circles around her clit. Mako luxuriated in the warm pleasure slowly enveloping her, moaning into his mouth until her hips started to buck against his fingers. 

Sliding a hand down his chest, she reached down to palm his hardening cock through the worn fabric of his trousers, “want more,”

She stroked him as he swelled further beneath her hand, “want this.”

"Ah, fuck, baby," he nudged her hips back with his clean hand, giving her the signal to shimmy back and off of his lap. Before she made it all the way off, though, Herc stopped her with the hand on her ribs and held the two fingers he’d just pulled back from her cunt to his lips, winking at her as he sucked them clean. Mako grinned and dove back in for a quick kiss, tasting herself when his tongue slid against hers, then pushed herself back and fully back on the ground, immediately setting to work on unlacing her boots.

She dealt with her boots and socks and moved on to her pants’ fastenings while Herc rummaged through the bedside table for a condom and undid his own pants button and zipper, sighing slightly at the release of pressure on his erection tenting the fabric. He stood from the bed to push the garment from his hips as Mako kicked out of her own. 

Mako reached out and ran one hand down his bare chest, skipping down over sharp dips and planes of muscle, moving forward into his space again, hating the coldness of being even a foot from him. She trailed her fingertips through the dusting of dark red curls below his navel, finally hooking them into the waistband of his black boxer briefs.

She leaned in to kiss up his neck and along the underside of his jaw, the stubble there scratching deliciously against her lips. She brought her other hand to palm Herc’s cock through the soft cotton, relishing the shuddering breath it drew out of him.

Trailing kisses back down his neck and then down his chest, she hooked her other hand into his underwear and pulled gently. Slowly, she tugged them down his hips, his erection pulling free and bobbing up against his abdomen, flushed dark red, glistening with pre-come at the tip.

Mako pulled the boxer briefs the rest of the way down his legs, sinking to her knees in front of him and quickly reaching out to grip him at the base, leaning forward and sliding her mouth around the flared head.

She heard Herc suck air sharply through his teeth as one large, warm hand landed on the back of her neck, his fingers twitching in her hair like he was fighting with himself not to push her further down his length.

She went further anyway. Ran her tongue down, up and around his shaft as far as she could, then back up to suck and lave at the tip, not using any real technique, just savoring. Savoring the taste of him; the bitter salt of pre-come on her tongue, the heady musk of his skin as she breathed in deep through her nose, the feel of his goddamn, fucking cock in her mouth, hot and thick and heavy and everything she’d wanted. 

She stretched her lips further around him and moaned, high in her throat and began bobbing her head, hollowing her cheeks as she sucked and running her tongue everywhere she could get it.

Herc growled low in his throat, and Mako ran her free hand up his abdomen to feel the vibration in her fingertips, “fuck, Mako,” his voice was throaty, almost hoarse, and she made him sound like that. She sucked him harder and wriggled her hips to rub her thighs together, seriously needing friction as arousal flickered like hot coals deep in her gut.

“Mako--Mako, fuck,” a couple quick tugs at her hair made her pull off of Herc and look up at him, panting open-mouthed, her lips slick and tingling. The flicker of worry that she’d done something wrong died quickly as she met his eyes, dark with want and fixed on her.

He gave her a slight grin and ran his fingertips down her jaw, pressing his thumb against her lower lip.

“You keep that up, we’re gonna be done before we get started.”

Mako smiled against his thumb, “can’t have that,” she slipped her tongue out a bit and angled her head to suck the end of the digit between her teeth, giggling slightly when he groaned, then pushed gently on his hips to nudge him back toward the bunk.

Herc sat back down when, with a quick shake of his head and focused on rolling the condom onto himself. He blew out a long breath, his cheeks puffing out, while Mako quickly shucked her plain, black cotton briefs and stood still in between his spread knees, resisting the urge to fidget and shift nervously from foot to foot.

Finally he looked up at her, his expression soft, then leaned forward to press a kiss to the curved cut of her abdomen and gently kneaded the knuckles of one hand into her hip. “C’mere, pretty girl.”

She laid both hands on Herc’s shoulders, climbing back up to straddle his lap once again. Herc pulled her another searing, devouring kiss, and Mako slid one hand down, using her fingertips to line him up with her entrance and slowly, steadily, _finally_ sank down, impaling herself on his cock.

They stayed still for a few moments, listening to each other breathe as Mako adjusted to the stretch and fullness of his length inside of her. Herc rubbed small circles into her back and pressed kisses along her neck and shoulder until Mako started lightly rolling her hips back and forth to get her body to take him in further, moaning loudly when he was seated in her to the hilt.

"That my cue to start moving, love?" He asked. 

Mako huffed out a breath that could have been a laugh, nodding and slipping her hands off his shoulders to rub up and down his chest. 

Herc slid one hand down to her hip and the other to her ribs, pressing her to lean backward in his lap. Mako let him push her back and forth, his cock grinding in and out of her, slow and wet and deep, before hooking her ankles together behind his lower back and gripping his shoulders, holding on as he fucked her hard and steady.

Their pace picked up, Mako shoving her hips forward against Herc and rolling them when he pushed them back again, the metal of the bunk squealing with the force of it, the air filling with the sounds of their flesh meeting, their groans and rasping breaths.

Mako let her head drop back, crying out at the sharp jolts of pleasure that shot through her each time Herc drove deep into her. She moaned when she felt the pad of his thumb press and rub against her clit, alternating pressures and direction until he found the combination that made her gasp and her internal muscles flutter around his cock.

He leaned his head forward to brush his lips against her throat and up her jaw, “‘s that good, baby? That how you like it?”

The heat coiling inside her wouldn’t let words out of her throat, all she could do was pant and nod furiously before turning her head down to kiss him again, wet and open-mouthed. 

When he broke the kiss to worry the skin behind her ear with his teeth, she looked down at where they were joined, watching his thick length disappear inside of her, his broad hand splayed out on her stomach, his thumb rubbing steady circles on her slippery, swollen clit, “...fuck.”

Herc chuckled against her skin and nipped her earlobe, “think you wanna come for me, pretty girl”

Mako bit her lip, letting her head fall back again with a whine.

“Yeah, that’s right you do,” he growled into her ear, “fuck you feel so good, baby, wanna feel you come for me.”

Three more rolling thrusts of his hips had her digging her nails in to the hard muscles of his shoulders, her breath coming shorter and shorter. The burning tension in her gut twisted and turned, pulling tight and taught, and finally hooked sharply within her and released in a burst as she came with a loud, guttural cry that barely even sounded human.

She came back to Earth slowly, burrowed into Herc’s chest while he kissed her neck and murmured low in her ear, one of his arms laid up her back and cradling her close, the other still in it’s place at her hip, his thumb lightly rubbing her clit as her walls fluttered around him with the aftershocks of her orgasm.

He ran his fingertips lightly along her jaw, "you alright there?"

Se nodded and hummed into his shoulder, feeling him smile against where he'd been kissing her neck.  

"Good," he said, wrapping both arms firmly around her back, "'cause I'm not done with you yet, girl."

And with that, he stood up, holding her flush against his chest and turned to lay them down in the bunk, slotting in between her thighs, his cock still buried deep inside of her. 

He kissed her again and began to thrust slowly Mako moaned at the new angle, the wet drag and push of his hard length into her, her flesh bordering on over sensitive but fuck, it was still so fucking good.

She hitched her legs up around his hips and wound an arm over his shoulders, swallowing down his groans and nipping his bottom lip with her teeth. Herc growled against her lips and moved his hands from where they’d been flat on the bed at her shoulders, pushing one into the roots of her hair and gripping her ass with the other, using it to pull her against him as he picked up the pace.

Mako reached down to slide the tip of her middle finger over her clit, keeping her touch light as the new contact with the sensitive nub felt like sparks under her skin.

“Fuck, that’s right baby, touch yourself,” Herc tilted his head down to watch her fingers move, allowing Mako the room to scratch her nails up his scalp and move to breathe hotly into his ear.

“Want to come for you again.”

Herc groaned and picked his head back up to capture her lips again in a bruising kiss as he set to well and truly fucking her into oblivion.

However many times she’d dreamed of this, fantasized about it, none of them compared. None of them compared to this - to the actual weight of him, to Herc surrounding her completely, his body hot and solid above her, her back against his sheets, warm and smelling of him. His cock hard and grinding and pounding inside of her and his voice panting out filth and her name, hot and wet against her neck.

No, no fantasy even came close.

She closed her eyes and took in a deep, shuddering breath as the insistent heat in her belly spread out from where Herc drove into her again and again, up through her, under her skin. Her orgasm this time wasn’t like the last time, tearing through her, sharp and unyielding; instead it bloomed like a slow fire, making her limbs feel flush and hot.

The pad of her finger circled her clit once, twice more, and the fire banked. She let out a soft cry as her lower back arched off the bed and color danced behind her eyelids, her orgasm washing over her in steady pulses.

Distantly, she heard Herc moan as her walls clenched around him.

Herc’s forearms settled onto the pillow, bracketing her head as he buried his face into the join of her neck and shoulder. Kisses pressed and peppered along the delicate skin of her throat, she ran her hands up and around his arms and shoulders, feeling the twitch and tremble of muscle under her fingertips and the wet heat of his breath against her jaw.

He must have been burning. Must have been aching. She’d already come twice on his cock. And he’d been rock hard since he’d ripped off her blouse, achingly hard, his face and chest flushed, clearly biting back his own pleasure while he focused on giving her hers.

She drew her legs up to hook her ankles behind his lower back, her thighs bracketing his waist, and turned to catch the shell of his ear between her teeth.

“...want you to come.”

She deliberately let her lips drag after her teeth as Herc let out a loud whine and snapped his hips forward, driving into her a few more times before grinding in against her, panting hard, her name leaving his lips as he came.

He practically collapsed on top of her, holding the his weight up on the forearms braced at her head. When his arms started to shake, Mako unwound her legs, shifting so that they could turn onto their sides, whining at the sudden emptiness when he slipped out of her.

Herc leaned back to unceremoniously drop the condom onto the floor, then pulled her close against his chest again as they both caught their breath.

It should have been gross, should have been uncomfortable. Objectively, it was. Both of them overheated, breathing each other’s air, their bodies hot and sticky with sweat and spit and come, pressed in too close in the too-small bunk, trying to wind their legs together but neither of them possessing the coordination to accomplish that small feat.

Fuck, it was perfect.

Mako was the one to break the quiet, “this does mean that I’m not going to Anchorage, right?”

Herc let out a breathy laugh and groaned, then squeezed her tighter against him with the arm at her back, “you absolutely aren’t. I’ll tie you to this bloody bed if I have to.”

“Promise?” She asked, grinning.

He laughed again and turned to squint up at the overhead lights, “promise. Now let’s get these fucking lights off and get some sleep, yeah?”

“That means moving,” she complained.

He gave her ass a light squeeze and rolled back to get up from the bed, stretching his arms up over his head as he walked to the bathroom to dispose of the condom and rinse himself off in the sink.

Mako watched him go before sitting up herself, surveying the scattered pile of their clothes on the ground, looking for her tank top. Her eyes landed on it, sticking out from underneath Herc’s henley. Smiling to herself, she plucked the henley up off the floor, pulling the garment over her head. It smelled like Herc, and was just as soft as she’d always imagined it would be.

She made her way to the bathroom, stopping to straighten up the table while she waited for Herc to finish up.

The manila envelope was still there. Smack in the middle of the table, staring at her, a glaring reminder of how much they still had to deal with and talk about., mind-blowing sex or no.

That could happen in the morning, though. Let her have one night, one morning to wake up in his arms if this all fell apart in the cold light of day.

“That looks good on you.” Herc was leaning against the doorway, still stark naked, giving her a smile that bordered on wistful. She smiled back and toyed with the buttons on the shirt as she crossed to the bathroom, stretching up to give him a quick kiss on her way in, closing the door behind her to relieve herself and rub some water on her face, still stiff from the tears she’d cried earlier.

When she came out, the lights in the room were off, save for the small bedside light. Max was asleep in his enormous dog bed, apparently able to sleep through anything.

Herc was already on his back in bed, the sheets pushed down around his waist to allow her room to get in. Clad in a pair of worn, white boxer shorts, he had one arm up and behind his head and the other stretched out on the empty side of the bed, watching her walk over and reaching up to pull her down into the bunk.

She switched the last light off as she climbed in, the room falling into darkness, and settled on her side in the crook of Herc’s arm, her head on his chest, tracing shapeless figures on his skin with her fingertips.

Exhaustion quickly pulled at her, and before it claimed her completely she pressed a soft kiss to Herc’s chest, mumbling out a “good night” against his skin. Soon after, she felt the warm, slight pressure of Herc’s lips against the top of her head, murmuring his own quiet “good night, baby” into her hair.

And as the steady metronome of his heartbeat lulled her to sleep, she could have sworn she heard an equally quiet “love you” whispered against her scalp. But she couldn’t be sure.


	10. Chapter 10

Sex with Mako certainly hadn’t been how Herc had expected the evening to end.

Certainly not how he’d expected the prolonged awfulness between them since the disaster in the drift sim to end. He’d figured it would end the way most conflicts between himself and the people he cared about did - ignored long enough for the wound to scab, but probably never heal.

Hansen family way, that was.

Wasn’t the Mako Mori way, though.

The Mako Mori way was apparently to thrust the issue under bright florescent lights, lay all of her cards on the table, then violently toss the ball into his court and force him to find his fucking balls and do something about it.

And then rounding it out with some spectacularly phenomenal sex.

He’d be kidding himself not to acknowledge that he hadn’t had sex like that in over ten years.

Not since Angie.

Sure, the jaegerflies were fun, and it wasn’t like his dick had magically shut off after he’d lost his wife, but it was never the same.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d resigned himself to it never being the same again until now. Thought that part of his life had died in Sydney, scorched from the Earth in a split-second.

_It’s different with someone you love..._

If there was ever a time when he didn’t expect to hear Angie’s voice in the back of his mind, it was definitely when he had a girl half his age laid out on top of him, sleeping in his shirt, with the hickey or two he was pretty sure he’d given her.

If said girl hadn’t just dozed off, he might have laughed out loud.

Because, shit, he did love her, didn’t he?

Had no right to. Had no right to even want to sleep with her.

But here they were.

He looked down at her, jet black hair gleaming against his chest in the silvery moonlight filtering in through the small window, her breath evening out, warm and damp on his skin as she slept.

However much we wanted to promise her, promise himself, that he’d never let anything happen to her, could he, really?

He’d made that promise before.

Twice, in fact.

And what had either of those promises amounted to?

One, a flash-shadow on an office building wall in Sydney and the gold band he wore on the chain with his dog tags.

The other, an empty, decorated grave and half a lifetime of anger, fear, and regret.

Mako may love him - he’d doubted it before but after she’d looked him in the eye and told him outright, he’d be a fool now not to take Mako Mori at her word - she may want to give him the world, give him everything.

But what could he possibly give her in return?

He took a deep breath and squeezed the bridge of his nose.

It was late, he was exhausted.

Hard questions about the future could wait till the morning. Everything could be different in the morning, after all.

Brushing that thought aside, he leant down to lightly kiss Mako’s forehead before settling back into the pillows. It had been a long time since he’d gone to bed with a woman who he actually wanted to be there when he woke up.

He wanted to enjoy it, even if it was just the one time.

When he fell asleep, he wasn’t met with the nightmares that had become customary since he’d stolen that old Bell Kiowa, reliving the thing shuddering and shaking around him, Charlie crying and screaming at him to go back, go back _we can’t just leave mum!_ , the crushing ache in his chest from knowing he was leaving the only girl he’d ever loved to die alone and afraid.

Nor did he fall into the screeching of metal, the roar of a kaiju outside and the searing heat of his arm shattering against the conn-pod wall, hearing the last words his son would ever speak, words he never should have been alive to hear, repeating over and over like some deranged prayer that had followed him into unconsciousness every night since Pitfall.

Instead, a memory, one warm and welcome, occupied his dreams.

Two years ago now, maybe three, sitting on the roof of the Sydney Shatterdome with Stacker, a handful of actually decent beers that one of Striker’s techs had gotten on the black market and shared with Herc.

The vivid, sparkling blue of the ocean in front of them, the sky slowly turning orange and pink as the sun went down over a long, rambling conversation. One that had become more and more rare as more and more jaegers fell and nearly all of Stacker’s time and energy was occupied with a war effort being increasingly put on his shoulders.

The conversation had turned to Mako, and Stacker’s worry that their continuing to butt heads over Mako’s desire to pilot would begin to strain their relationship.

“She’d follow you anywhere, Stacks, you know that,” Herc had said, “you saved her.”

Stacker shook his head, “saved each other, more like.”

He took a long pull from the bottle before continuing, “after Tam was gone, and all this,” he gestured to his forehead, “started to get worse, fuck, I’d have packed it in, weren’t for her. Told the world and the PPDC to suck my cock and spent the last of my days drinkin’ for free off grateful locals and waiting for my brains to ooze out my ears.”

“Well there’s a plan.”

He smiled then, a fond look on his face, “that girl, though… ah, I couldn’t do that to her. To let her down like that? I’d hate myself. She wouldn’t let me, anyhow. Reckon I’m still here because of her. And fuck, some days I swear I’m getting this thing ended just for her. Give her back a normal life, after all she’s been through, spend whatever time I’ve got left making sure she gets everything she ever wanted.”

If ever there was a time that Herc would have thought his old friend could have been described as looking ‘wistful’, it was then. 

“She deserves that, doesn’t she?” Stacker said.

Herc had nodded, not daring to say out loud that he wished, every day, the same thing for his son, a wish he feared, for many reasons, wouldn’t come true.

He closed his eyes on the Shatterdome roof in Sydney, feeling the heat of the setting sun on his face.

He opened them again in a too-small bunk in Hong Kong, still feeling that warmth on his cheek, the condensation from that cold beer on his palm.

And the weight of Mako Mori asleep on his chest.

Without thinking, the hand that had settled at her back during the night moved up to touch his fingertips to the warm skin of her neck - gently, so as not to wake her just yet.

_...she deserves that, doesn’t she?_

He’d fallen asleep with the thought of what could he possibly give her?

Waking up now, he was almost overwhelmed with the thought of what wouldn’t he give her?

And fuck, Stacker was right. She did deserve it. Anything she wanted.

If what she wanted was him, she could have him. For as long as she wanted, she could have him.

He smiled down at her sleeping form, tucking an arm up behind his head.

Mako stirred slightly as she woke up, her eyelashes fluttering against his skin. He watched her run a fingertip underneath one of the faint drivesuit scars that ran over his ribs on his right side and felt rather than saw her smile.

After a moment she looked up, seeming almost surprised to see him awake. He smiled down at her.

“Morning,” he said.

She smiled back, “good morning.”

He cocked his head as they both fell silent again. She seemed reserved again, almost nervous.

“Thought I was gonna leave or something?”

She shrugged, now idly tracing a small crescent, back and forth, on his chest. “Not sure what I was expecting,” she said quietly.

Wrapping both arms around her back, he pulled her up onto his chest, basking in the warmth and weight of her up against him.

He tilted her jaw down with his thumb and pressed his mouth to hers in a soft kiss. She slid her hands up over his chest to rest one on his shoulder and the other against his jaw, lazily kissing him back.

“Not a bad way to wake up, mm?”

She made a small, contented sound, “it is quite nice.”

He grinned and went back to kissing her. He may be crap with words, but this, this he could do.

He let his hands wander as they kissed, running down her back and over her bare arse and back up again, pushing her shirt - _his shirt_ \- out of the way as he went. Her skin was so soft under his palms, the delicate flex of lean muscle underneath made Herc want to spend hours mapping every inch with his fingertips, and then again with his mouth. He made a mental note to do so in the near future.

A rumbling growl from Herc’s stomach interrupted the silence and he let out an exasperated groan.

Mako laughed against his lips, “breakfast?”

“Guess so,” he said, “means moving, though, doesn’t it?”

She just pouted at him.

Herc chuckled and reached up to find the intercom panel on the wall near the head of the bed, dialing the extension for the mess kitchen.

Static buzzed for a moment before a voice came through, “mess, this is Joe.”

“Joe, this is Marshall Hansen, can you have two take-away breakfasts brought to my quarters? With coffee, please.”

“Of course, sir, no problem,” the voice answered, “about fifteen minutes?”

“That’s fine, Joe, thanks.” He switched the intercom off and brought his hand back down to Mako’s shoulder. “Problem solved.”

“Such service,” she said.

She took a look around the room, at the clothes strewn about on the floor. 

“Think we should clean up before he gets here?” She looked back up at him, a mischievous grin painting her features, “we made a bit of a mess.”

“Fuck it,” he said, “ ‘s just clothes.”

She laughed - a light, open sound he didn’t think he’d ever get tired of hearing - and looked back around the quarters.

Her eyes hit something and she stilled, quiet again.

He followed her line of sight to the manila envelope on the table.

Looking at it, she was probably thinking about the same thing he was, how shit the last month had been between them. With Mako pushing to leave because he’d refused to believe what was right in front of his face, and him pushing back to keep her here, even though he refused to believe what was right in front of his face.

“Mako?”

She turned her head back to him, her expression slightly confused, almost guarded. “What happened? What changed?”

He smiled at her softly. “What, last night? What happened was some crazy sheila came pounding on my door, yelling at me about replacement candidates and Anchorage, and some way or another she ended up naked in my bed.”

“Herc…”

Herc nodded, guessing that this wasn’t the time to keep the mood light.

Pushing her hair back behind her ears, twisting a blue tip in his fingers before tucking it back, he took a breath through his nose and gave her a small smile.

“There are a lot of things in my life that I regret, Mako Mori,” he said, “and letting you walk out that door would have been another.” He shook his head and shrugged one shoulder, “maybe I shouldn’t want you the way that I do, Mako, but fuck, I’m done fighting it.”

He took her face gently in both hands and leaned his head down to kiss her softly, then leaned back again, “last night you said you wanted this, wanted...us. Fuckin’ hell, I want it too. However long you want it for; a week, a month, forever, whatever you w--”

She surged up to kiss him, cutting off whatever words he still had left to say. He kissed her back eagerly, pouring every promise, every proclamation of love and devotion he knew at some point he wouldn’t be able to say out loud, poured it all into that kiss, winding himself around her, his arms around her back and his legs twisting together with hers, rolling them both over in the morning warmth of the sheets.

_knock knock knock_

Breakfast.

They both groaned this time.

“You’re answering that,” Mako said. She rolled off of him and out of bed, bending down to sift through the clothing on the floor for her panties.

“Yes ma’am.” Watching her pull the small black undergarment back on, it occurred to him that he didn’t get to take those off of her himself the night before.

 _Next time,_ he thought, getting out of the bunk to answer the door, grabbing an undershirt from the small dresser as he went. He grinned to himself, his chest puffing up a bit, at the thought of lots of ‘next times’ with Mako.

He brought the containers back to the table, where Mako stood, having cleared off the top, holding that damned envelope in her hands. Putting their breakfasts down, he walked around the table to her side, closer to the desk.

Mako’s eyes were on him as he picked up the wire trashcan from underneath the desk and held it out to her with one hand. 

She held his gaze and smiled, her deep brown eyes bright, then pointedly dropped the cursed thing in.

“I think it can stay there, this time,” she said.

He dropped the can back down and pulled her close, flush and warm against him, “goddamn right it can.”

He kissed her deeply then, not bothering to keep his hands from roaming, and walked them both backwards toward the bed.

Scrambled eggs and coffee tasted better cold, anyway.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's a two-fer for the long weekend!

“Tell me again why we agreed to go to this ridiculous thing?”

Mako furrowed her brow as she straightened Herc’s bow tie, “I don’t think we did, I think Raleigh RSVP’d for all three of us so that he would not have to go by himself.”

“Remind me to tell him he’s an arsehole for it.”

“You’ve told him twice today,” she finished with the tie and stepped back to survey her handiwork, “but I’ll tell him again for you.”

Herc scoffed, “you’re not the one who has to wear a bloody tie.”

“No, but I have to wear pantyhose, so we’re even,” she said, turning to give herself one more once-over in the full length mirror of her quarters.

Herc grinned behind her, “well maybe you shouldn’t.”

Mako rolled her eyes, “shouldn’t what? Wear pantyhose? It’s a black-tie fundraiser with the UN, I have to.” A hand slid around her waist and she leaned back as Herc pressed himself against her back, nudging her jaw with his lips.

“But it’ll be easier for us to have a quickie in the bathroom if you don’t,” he husked into her ear.

She slapped his hand lightly and turned around to draw him in for a quick kiss, smiling to herself as she did so.

It had been six months since the debacle in the drift sim, five since Mako had gone storming into his room, ripped up inside, yelling about replacement candidates, and hadn’t ended up leaving until late the next morning. The next afternoon, really. 

Sometimes it dawned on her how much things really had changed since then. 

Since then, it was a rare night that she slept alone, and increasing in their rarity were the nights when one of them was awoken by a nightmare about one of the many they’d both lost. As much as she felt the change in herself, she saw it reflected in Herc. He smiled more easily now, laughed more easily. 

They talked about the future like it was a real thing, not like before the kaiju were eliminated when they all thought humanity would be the ones to go instead.

And the sex. 

The sex was off the fucking charts, but in quality and quantity. Every surface in both of their quarters had been thoroughly, and fantastically, christened; in addition to their shared offices, conference rooms, supply closets, the private training rooms adjacent to the kwoon, the shower and changing rooms adjacent to the kwoon, _the kwoon_ , LOCCENT on one memorable occasion.

So now here they were, kissing in her quarters in black-tie attire, Mako’s black, shimmering, column-style gown covering the red, speckled marks on the inside of her upper thighs in the shape of Herc’s mouth; and Herc’s tux covering the faint red lines on his shoulders and sides in the shape of her fingernails.

Herc pulled back first, keeping one hand at the small of her back, their hips pressed together, and bringing the other hand up to rub his thumb along her lower lip, making her bite slightly at the tickling sensation.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

Mako smirked against his thumb, “it wasn’t too painful, was it?”

The hand at her back laid a firm smack on her ass, then held her in place when she squealed and bucked playfully away from the sting.

“I was _thinking_ ,” he repeated, smiling, “that we should go someplace.”

“We are going someplace. In fact, we’re late for someplace.”

Herc shook his head, “I don’t mean the fundraiser, all politicians and bullshit. I mean you and me, far away from here, from the ‘dome, from all of this. Anywhere you want.”

“Like a vacation?”

“Exactly like a vacation. I’m sure Raleigh and Tendo can keep the place from burning down for a week or two.” He lifted his eyebrows at her, “so? What do you think?”

A vacation. Mako hadn’t been on a vacation since… since a long time ago. She’d gone places with Sensei, sure, all around the world. But she’d been a child, scared and afraid - oceans meant kaiju, cities meant kaiju. Most of the trips they’d gone on had to do with fighting kaiju anyway, they weren’t exactly for pleasure.

But now…

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and considered locations, winding her arms around Herc’s shoulders while he settled both hands at the small of her back once more, a small smile on his lips as he watched her think.

Somewhere tropical could be nice, maybe Hawaii, but Hawaii meant PPDC gravestones and memories of Tamsin; beautiful, fierce Tamsin wasting away to nothing. And no place surrounded by ocean had truly escaped all the Blue that had spilled into the water over the course of the kaiju invasion…

Japan meant home for her, Australia home for Herc, and too many ghosts to face if they were looking to escape for a bit. Some place in America could work, maybe New York, possibly the Caribbean...

A slow smile spread across her face as an idea occurred to her.

It was cliche, that she knew. But cliches were cliches for a reason, right?

She met his eyes again and beamed at him, “Paris?”

His own smile widened to match hers, splitting across his handsome face, “Paris it is, pretty girl.”

She dove forward to kiss him, smiling against his mouth. He laughed against hers and lifted her off the ground, bending backward so that she laid against his chest. He deepened the kiss for a moment before setting her back down.

He gave her ass another quick spank and stepped back, dropping his hands from her back to slide them down her forearms, “alright, we need to go, because if we don’t, that dress is ending up on the floor and we’re never getting out of here.”

Mako shot him a mock-pout, “but we’re going to Paris, can’t we stay here and celebrate?”

Herc pulled her in again, hooking his fingertips into hers, and dropped his voice down a couple of octaves to the register he knew drove her crazy. “We’ll celebrate when we get back, Miss Mori.”

“I’m going to hold you to that, Hercules,” she stepped back, dropping his hands and flicking her hips the slightest bit, “just let me get my lipstick.”

She crossed to the bedside table and pulled open the top drawer, pushing aside papers and various junk that tends to accumulate in bedside drawers. She uncovered the lipstick she wanted, but something else peeked out at her from underneath a stack of papers.

Picking up the tube with one hand, she pulled the other object from the bottom of the drawer with the other.

Glossy black and nondescript, the key card for room 700 at Hannibal Chau’s club.

Scratches from use had dulled the shine on the plastic, but it felt as smooth between her fingers as the first time she’d picked it up.

Mako huffed a breath through her nose as she thought about the first time she’d held it. 

How nervous she’d been, nervous and ashamed. 

Convinced that she was doomed to harbor a secret crush on her father’s best friend for the rest of her life, that playing pretend with a paid stranger was her only option. 

Convinced that Herc would never want her.

Herc, one of the greatest, bravest, kindest men she’d ever known(and she’d known quite a few). 

Herc, who wrapped her in his arms like she belonged there, and no where else. 

Herc, who made love to her like the world would end tomorrow, kissed her like they had all eternity to spend together, and always let her hog the blankets.

She looked over at where he stood, waiting for her in the middle of the room. He watched her quizzically, like he was trying to figure out what could be so fascinating about the small, black card she twisted between her fingers.

“What’s that you got there?” He stopped fiddling with his cufflinks and came to stand behind her.

She smiled fondly at the plastic rectangle in her hand before tossing it in the small wastebasket next to the night table. She leaned in to give him a soft, quick kiss, “just something I don’t need anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand that's it!
> 
> Thank you so much to all of you who've left me kudos and comments and love for this story, despite my erratic posting schedule(or lack thereof). I love you all!


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